The Monkey and the Tortoise
A Tagalog Tale
This story is from Dr. José Rizal’s Two Eastern Fables
, a comparative study in Japanese and Philippine folk-lore which appeared in the July, 1889, Truebner’s Record (London), and attracted the attention of European ethnologists. Dr. H. Kern, a Dutch Malay authority made it the subject of his paper before the International Congress of Orientalists in Stockholm that year and published a monograph upon it, with additional notes, at Leyden, in 1889.
The Illustrations were photographed from an autograph album, now in the possession of Dr. T.H. Pardo de Tavera, where Rizal hastily sketched them one afternoon in Paris while calling at a friend’s home, as a surprise for the owner.
The only folktale published during the more than three centuries of Spanish rule seems to be The Tortoise and the Monkey, which Dr. José Rizal published in 1889, while he was in London, in a comparative study he made between this tale and a Japanese tale. (Note by Damiana L. Eugenio's Philippine Folk Literature : Folk Tales)
Sketches made by Rizal in the album of Mrs. Juan Luna of the fable The Monkey and the Turtle in 1886.